User:Aitantv/What? How? Why?
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Commander (2019)
Commander (2019) is a silent short film depicting an encounter between animal-human hybrids and a shipwrecked Anthropologist. Set both in the past and the future, the alien creatures inhabit a warped interzone, a coastal shingle wasteland. The anthropologist, Colonel Pike, appears as an apparition from the horizon, almost a ghost from our colonial past. The hybrids are a hyper-evolved blend of animal and human. Colonel Pike becomes the subject of perverse ritual and is magically banished.
The film is shot using a voyeuristic camera style. In collaboration with costume designer Florent Venet, the hybrid costumes were the starting point for the project. Through choreography and improvisation the creatures come to life as they crawl, undulate, and writhe on the terrain while Colonel Pike awkwardly trips over.
The clash between the hybrids and the anthropologist creates the possibility of combining multiple oppositions: past/future, animal/human, design/evolution. By conjoining these polarities what kind of reality can we call into being? I’m interested in manifesting conflict.
OOO (2020)
OOO (2020) takes the form of a video diary where sacrifices are offered to a deity in my attic. It’s time to feed the hungry boy. Will my offerings suffice? Colorful vignettes of domestic life and found texts move in a meditative rhythm narrated by a grave, malevolent voiceover. Made during the COVID-19 pandemic, it serves as a document of life spent indoors.
OOO is an anagram for Out of Office. As the workplace slips into the domestic, what impact does this have on our psyche? The conflation of work, creativity, worship, and play point to the confusing context the late capitalist subject operates in. By rendering a fictive digital Deity the video considers new forms of worship, prayer, and ritual outside of organised Religion.
Join O (2021)
Join O (2021) is a cult recruitment film in which spiritual leader O sells his miracle cure, Pure Mineral Solution (PMS™), to new customers and followers. PMS™ nurtures your evolution, breeds success, and gives you access to a global movement. Without it you remain passive and hopelessly average.
Hyperreal 3D renderings of PMS™ combine with saturated studio footage reminiscent of glossy tech ads and New Age imagery. Having worked in advertising and with an Orthodox background, the filmmaker examines the juicy intersection between spirituality and branding. In both cases ideology is holy and the zenith of power – not people. What does an Enlightened consumer look like? With eyes glowing electric blue, O is the answer.
Original
Commander (2019)
What?
Commander (2019) is a silent short film depicting an encounter between animal-human hybrids and a shipwrecked Anthropologist. Set simultaneously in the past and the future, the alien creatures inhabit a strange interzone, a coastal shingle wasteland. The anthropologist, Colonel Pike, appears as an apparition from the horizon, almost a ghost from the colonial past. The hybrids are a hyper-evolved blend of animal and human, performing both behaviors at once. Colonel Pike becomes the subject of perverse ritual and is magically banished.
How?
The film shot using a voyeuristic documentary camera style to create a sense of pseudo-reality. The choreography of shots and movements was planned and rehersed but ultimately adapted and improvised on location to create a documented theatrical experience. Nevertheless, framed, stylized, and color-saturated shots make it a clear fictional piece. Artificial sound design further removes the audience from the possibility that this a genuine documented encounter, potentially adding to the other-worldliness of the experience.
The film was made in collaboration with costume designer Florent Venet. Using the hybrid costumes as a starting point, the theatrical performance was constructed to bring these fictive beings to life. Filmed on location in Dungeness, the setting of the film allows us to escape into an alternate reality fusing historical past and speculative future. Five actors perform the role of the Hybrids, constantly negotiating between human and animal behaviors. Their physical habitus, or movements, appear to be at one with the surroundings, forming part of the architectures in the landscape. In contrast, the single Anthropologist is outnumbered, atomized, and seems insignificant and poorly suited to his surroundings.
Why?
The film functions as a parody of the first encounters between Anthropologists and indigenous cultures. Originally used by Colonials as observers to collect data to exploit indigenous groups, Anthropologists traditionally play the ambiguous double role of insider/outsider. This is a persistent tension and problematic in the field of anthropology, which I think translates to socially-engaged art making and documentary.
The clash between these entities, the hybrids and the anthropologist, adds dramatic effect and tension. It also creates the possibility of combining multiple oppositions in one artwork: past/future, animal/human, subject/object, artificial/landscape. By conjoining these polarities what kind of reality can we call into being? I’m interested in manifesting conflict and schism.
Through the narrative of the film the power relation between Subject/Object, Anthropologist/Indigenous, is flipped. In a crude and simplistic power reversal there is an element of catharsis, a healing of Colonial wounds. Perhaps on the part of the filmmaker, it is also a form of apology, of shedding guilt. But fundamentally the intention is to reframe a story and project new bizarre possible futures.
The setting or location plays a key role in the conceptual development of the film. Dungeness is a stark, baron, surreal geography, and hosts multiple power stations, fishing villages, derelict railroads, and countless species of deep-rooted wild flowers. It thus provides the perfect backdrop to stage this falsely imagined encounter. Moreover, in realtion of cinema history, it is the setting of Derek Jarman’s The Garden (1990), in which the filmmaker plays a parody of himself slipping between dreams as beautiful Queer vignettes and violent homophobic incidents are re-enacted. Only such a complex and multi-layered geography would therefore be appropriate for hosting Commander (2019), a speculative fantasy that attempts to collapse multiple themes and binaries to create new dialectics.
OOO (2020)
What?
OOO (2020) is a biographical diaristic video collage where the filmmaker offers a human sacrifice to a deity in the attic. Through montage, multiple colorful vignettes of domestic life are connected. As the filmmaker/narrator prepares sacrifices for the deity – wine, bread, hair – and the video weaves together colorful collages, the text ruminates on themes such as marriage, agile working, employment, celibacy, and self-transformation. The lighting of a tea light, a naked flame, is used repeatedly in the video to center the movement of images.
How?
The short video borrows text from essays, internet forums, self-help brochures, and tabloid tales to convey multiple meanings through one subject or performer. The filmmaker is performing a version of himself that is ambiguously (and sardonically) genuine. Various types of humor intermingle with sincere confessions creating a thick soup of subtext.
The video is shot in HD at 30fps but slowed down to the standard 24fps. Together with the montage style, a meditative and reflective tone is achieved where the viewer can access that subtext and subconscious of the narrator. In sync with the slowed down visuals, the voiceover is also proportionately slowed down. The pitch of the voice is thus much lower, giving the sense that the narrator is invested with magical qualities or is simply drained of energy – both worthy interpretations. Towards the end of the video the montage accelerates into a rapid clusterfuck of images from coral, to palaces, to sea shells, as a profane digital representation of the fictive Deity.
Why?
OOO (2020) explores the possibility of using video as a medium for self-confession and universal healing. It is a humorous and humanistic act of collective therapy. By repeating or regurgitating referents from domestic life and rendering them in shiny colorful digital images, the video offers an emancipatory/cathartic release where the domestic space is made to be an Other space.
Trapped in our little appartments or hovels during the covid pandemic, OOO (2020) serves as a document of life spent indoors, behind windows, and how insular yet universality of that experience. By rendering a fictive digital Deity the video also opens a space to consider new types of worship, prayer, and ritual as we move away from formal Judeo-Christian Religions with the rise of the internet and agnosticism.
The broad combination of references and texts also builds on the notion of the performer/artist as a composite of beings. Rather than copy/pasting texts, the filmmaker here twists and transmogrifies them, thus changing the meaning entirely. By regurgitating these different texts and recontextualizing them in a single work the filmmaker hopes to influence and even change reality.
OOO is also an anagram for Out of Office, given that many of us, including the filmmaker, have been forced to work from home since the outbreak of covid. Hence the filmmaker’s refers to their employment status. As the workplace slips into the domestic, how is our psyche influenced and what impact does this have on our relationship to labor and home? Art making is of course also a form of labor, oftentimes one artists are not proportionately financially rewarded in terms of units of time to labour. The conflation of work, creativity, worship, and play in OOO (2020) all point to the confusing context the late capitalist subject operates in.
Join O (2021)
What?
Join O (2021) is a fake video commercial in which marketeer and spiritual leader O sells his miracle cure, Pure Mineral Solution, to new customers and followers. PMS nurtures your evolution, breeds success, and gives you access to a global movement.
How?
Using a combination of live action performance and hyper-real 3D renderings, the fake product commercial for Pure Mineral Solution is brought to life. The artist/filmmaker plays O, the central leader of the movement, with four supporting actors playing the followers or Elements. To mimic the glossy style of tech ads and the Edenic look of New-Age marketing, the live action footage was filmed in a studio with stylistic lighting and vibrant colors to lure in the viewer or would-be consumer.
Why?
There is a hierarchy of image quality embeded in the video. Next to the hi-res 4K graded footage, the 3D renderings appear hyper sharp and beyond real. The filmmaker wanted the product to be the star and main focal point of the film. In competitive advertising and marketeering the brand is holy and the zenith of power – not people. Indeed, brands have taken the place of Religions in making promises to vulnerable peoples in exchange for their attention and money.
Join O (2021) exists at the fluid intersection between new age spiritualism and tech marketing. As a cult recruitment film, it parodies the Genesis II Church, a movement that sells household bleach branded as Miracle Mineral Supplement. But as a glossy tech ad, it references technosolutionism, where tech can resolve inequality and bring spiritual enlightenment. By fusing tech marketing and New-Age recrutiment videos, Join O (2021) draws attention to how both arenas use cunning and conviction to achieve reach and influence.